You conjured it into existence, and for that I thank you.
*** TOP GUN : Maverick ***
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Last: 10 mo ago by YNWA_AG
Val Kilmer article in The NY Times - Long article about his past, his throat cancer, and what he's doing these days
One small paragraph that we were all been looking for Here it is
There's a "Top Gun" sequel coming out this year. Kilmer is in it. He's not allowed to say anything about the new "Top Gun" except that he's in it. And that instead of being enemies with Maverick, their relationship has changed. "We're friends," he said. "This time we're friends."
Also a bit about Top Gun - his first real big part in a movie
Then in 1986 came "Top Gun," and after that, everyone knew who Val Kilmer was. Because how could you not? Iceman, the fighter pilot Tom Cruise's Maverick is trying to best for the "best of the best" of the best position, has maybe 17 words in the whole movie, but it is there that you can see Val Kilmer's greatest gift, which is to make something out of nothing to breathe real life into a character who was only there to set the volleyball so that Maverick could spike it.
If you asked me then what beguiled me about Val Kilmer, I wouldn't have had the words for it. Instead, I would have pictured a man without a shirt (I am still hard-pressed to picture young Val Kilmer in a regular shirt), but it wasn't his body that stuck with me when the lights came on. No, it was his awesome physicality, him spinning that volleyball on his finger, him offering the most fraught '80s masculinity-soaked condolences ever when Maverick's radar intercept officer, Goose, buys it during a flight exercise there was something in his immense focus and his full-bodied commitment to just plain Being-in-the-Scene that took my breath away. I read somewhere that Kilmer was so dedicated to inhabiting the role that he created Team Iceman and Team Maverick factions in the "Top Gun" movie cast. What I also remember is Iceman's snapping his gum with his mighty jaw in nonresponse to Maverick's admitting that yes, he's dangerous. In that jaw snap which is my absolute favorite GIF to send to people there's so much more than a weird way to end a conversation: It's arrogance and pathos, frustration and whatever the emotion is where you know that laughing at someone will hurt them more than insulting them.
One small paragraph that we were all been looking for Here it is
There's a "Top Gun" sequel coming out this year. Kilmer is in it. He's not allowed to say anything about the new "Top Gun" except that he's in it. And that instead of being enemies with Maverick, their relationship has changed. "We're friends," he said. "This time we're friends."
Also a bit about Top Gun - his first real big part in a movie
Then in 1986 came "Top Gun," and after that, everyone knew who Val Kilmer was. Because how could you not? Iceman, the fighter pilot Tom Cruise's Maverick is trying to best for the "best of the best" of the best position, has maybe 17 words in the whole movie, but it is there that you can see Val Kilmer's greatest gift, which is to make something out of nothing to breathe real life into a character who was only there to set the volleyball so that Maverick could spike it.
If you asked me then what beguiled me about Val Kilmer, I wouldn't have had the words for it. Instead, I would have pictured a man without a shirt (I am still hard-pressed to picture young Val Kilmer in a regular shirt), but it wasn't his body that stuck with me when the lights came on. No, it was his awesome physicality, him spinning that volleyball on his finger, him offering the most fraught '80s masculinity-soaked condolences ever when Maverick's radar intercept officer, Goose, buys it during a flight exercise there was something in his immense focus and his full-bodied commitment to just plain Being-in-the-Scene that took my breath away. I read somewhere that Kilmer was so dedicated to inhabiting the role that he created Team Iceman and Team Maverick factions in the "Top Gun" movie cast. What I also remember is Iceman's snapping his gum with his mighty jaw in nonresponse to Maverick's admitting that yes, he's dangerous. In that jaw snap which is my absolute favorite GIF to send to people there's so much more than a weird way to end a conversation: It's arrogance and pathos, frustration and whatever the emotion is where you know that laughing at someone will hurt them more than insulting them.
Kilmer's role in Top Gun has always had me conflicted. He's so good as Iceman, but it totally changed the trajectory of his career.
In 1984, he made his debut in "Top Secret!" In 1985, he made "Real Genius." Those are two of my all-time favorite comedies, and he was so good doing comedic roles.
Then, he made "Top Gun" and never made a comedy again (well, until MacGruber).
I really wish they had made a "Real Genius 2" because I'd love to see what became of Chris Knight.
In 1984, he made his debut in "Top Secret!" In 1985, he made "Real Genius." Those are two of my all-time favorite comedies, and he was so good doing comedic roles.
Then, he made "Top Gun" and never made a comedy again (well, until MacGruber).
I really wish they had made a "Real Genius 2" because I'd love to see what became of Chris Knight.
GiveEmHellBill said:
Kilmer's role in Top Gun has always had me conflicted. He's so good as Iceman, but it totally changed the trajectory of his career.
In 1984, he made his debut in "Top Secret!" In 1985, he made "Real Genius." Those are two of my all-time favorite comedies, and he was so good doing comedic roles.
Then, he made "Top Gun" and never made a comedy again (well, until MacGruber).
I really wish they had made a "Real Genius 2" because I'd love to see what became of Chris Knight.
true... but we eventually got Doc Holliday which Kilmer nailed.
Apparently the New York Times has no idea how volleyball works.nosoupforyou said:
to breathe real life into a character who was only there to set the volleyball so that Maverick could spike it.
In a non-COVID universe, our need for speed would have be quenched... tomorrow night.
UGH!!TCTTS said:
In a non-COVID universe, our need for speed would have be quenched... tomorrow night.
From Ice Man to Ice Cream man.....
TCTTS said:
In a non-COVID universe, our need for speed would have be quenched... tomorrow night.
Would have been risky but I still say it could have been.
Heck, it could have just pushed to NEXT weekend, done decent numbers, and then had all of July basically to itself to do good money.
TCTTS said:
In a non-COVID universe, our need for speed would have be quenched... tomorrow night.
My feelings towards COVID, in regards to this movie.
This message has been approved by Brad, Jerry and Mitch..
Watched a making of Top Gun this week.
Learned - the classroom scene was one of the glaring things the Navy pilots said would never happen - school desks, cheap blackboard, in a hangar.
If a tour guide in San Diego shows you on the beach where the volleyball scene took place, they are lying. Crews found a grassy park, filled it with sand, shot for 2 days, picked up the sand and replaced the grass.
Meg Ryan auditioned for Kelly McGillis role and did not get it.
Movie slammed by critics.
Learned - the classroom scene was one of the glaring things the Navy pilots said would never happen - school desks, cheap blackboard, in a hangar.
If a tour guide in San Diego shows you on the beach where the volleyball scene took place, they are lying. Crews found a grassy park, filled it with sand, shot for 2 days, picked up the sand and replaced the grass.
Meg Ryan auditioned for Kelly McGillis role and did not get it.
Movie slammed by critics.
Roger Ebert's review from April 1986 in which he rather amazingly gives away THE ENTIRE MOVIE
In the opening moments of "Top Gun," an ace Navy pilot flies upside down about 18 inches above a Russian-built MiG and snaps a Polaroid picture of the enemy pilot. Then he flips him the finger and peels off.
It's a hot-dog stunt, but it makes the pilot (Tom Cruise) famous within the small circle of Navy personnel who are cleared to receive information about close encounters with enemy aircraft. And the pilot, whose code name is Maverick, is selected for the Navy's elite flying school, which is dedicated to the dying art of aerial dogfights.
The best graduate from each class at the school is known as "Top Gun." And there, I think, you have the basic materials of this movie, except, of course, for three more obligatory ingredients in all movies about brave young pilots: (1) the girl, (2) the mystery of the heroic father and (3) the rivalry with another pilot. It turns out that Maverick's dad was a brilliant Navy jet pilot during the Vietnam era, until he and his plane disappeared in unexplained circumstances. And it also turns out that one of the instructors at the flying school is a pretty young brunet (Kelly McGillis) who wants to know a lot more about how Maverick snapped that other pilot's picture.
"Top Gun" settles fairly quickly into alternating ground and air scenes, and the simplest way to sum up the movie is to declare the air scenes brilliant and the earthbound scenes grimly predictable. This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think.
Aerial scenes always present a special challenge in a movie.
There's the danger that the audience will become spatially disoriented.
We're used to seeing things within a frame that respects left and right, up and down, but the fighter pilot lives in a world of 360-degree turns. The remarkable achievement in "Top Gun" is that it presents seven or eight aerial encounters that are so well choreographed that we can actually follow them most of the time, and the movie gives us a good secondhand sense of what it might be like to be in a dogfight.
The movie's first and last sequences involve encounters with enemy planes. Although the planes are MiGs, the movie provides no nationalities for their pilots. We're told the battles take place in the Indian Ocean, and that's it. All of the sequences in between take place at Top Gun school, where Maverick quickly gets locked into a personal duel with another brillant pilot, Iceman (Val Kilmer). In one sequence after another, the sound track trembles as the sleek planes pursue each other through the clouds, and, yeah, it's exciting. But the love story between Cruise and McGillis is a washout.
It's pale and unconvincing compared with the chemistry between Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay in "Risky Business," and between McGillis and Harrison Ford in "Witness" - not to mention between Richard Gere and Debra Winger in "An Officer and a Gentleman," which obviously inspired "Top Gun." Cruise and McGillis spend a lot of time squinting uneasily at each other and exchanging words as if they were weapons, and when they finally get physical, they look like the stars of one of those sexy new perfume ads. There's no flesh and blood here, which is remarkable, given the almost palpable physical presence McGillis had in "Witness." In its other scenes on the ground, the movie seems content to recycle old cliches and conventions out of countless other war movies.
Wouldn't you know, for example, that Maverick's commanding officer at the flying school is the only man who knows what happened to the kid's father in Vietnam? And are we surprised when Maverick's best friend dies in his arms? Is there any suspense as Maverick undergoes his obligatory crisis of conscience, wondering whether he can ever fly again? Movies like "Top Gun" are hard to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts are so relentless. The dogfights are absolutely the best since Clint Eastwood's electrifying aerial scenes in "Firefox." But look out for the scenes where the people talk to one another.
In the opening moments of "Top Gun," an ace Navy pilot flies upside down about 18 inches above a Russian-built MiG and snaps a Polaroid picture of the enemy pilot. Then he flips him the finger and peels off.
It's a hot-dog stunt, but it makes the pilot (Tom Cruise) famous within the small circle of Navy personnel who are cleared to receive information about close encounters with enemy aircraft. And the pilot, whose code name is Maverick, is selected for the Navy's elite flying school, which is dedicated to the dying art of aerial dogfights.
The best graduate from each class at the school is known as "Top Gun." And there, I think, you have the basic materials of this movie, except, of course, for three more obligatory ingredients in all movies about brave young pilots: (1) the girl, (2) the mystery of the heroic father and (3) the rivalry with another pilot. It turns out that Maverick's dad was a brilliant Navy jet pilot during the Vietnam era, until he and his plane disappeared in unexplained circumstances. And it also turns out that one of the instructors at the flying school is a pretty young brunet (Kelly McGillis) who wants to know a lot more about how Maverick snapped that other pilot's picture.
"Top Gun" settles fairly quickly into alternating ground and air scenes, and the simplest way to sum up the movie is to declare the air scenes brilliant and the earthbound scenes grimly predictable. This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think.
Aerial scenes always present a special challenge in a movie.
There's the danger that the audience will become spatially disoriented.
We're used to seeing things within a frame that respects left and right, up and down, but the fighter pilot lives in a world of 360-degree turns. The remarkable achievement in "Top Gun" is that it presents seven or eight aerial encounters that are so well choreographed that we can actually follow them most of the time, and the movie gives us a good secondhand sense of what it might be like to be in a dogfight.
The movie's first and last sequences involve encounters with enemy planes. Although the planes are MiGs, the movie provides no nationalities for their pilots. We're told the battles take place in the Indian Ocean, and that's it. All of the sequences in between take place at Top Gun school, where Maverick quickly gets locked into a personal duel with another brillant pilot, Iceman (Val Kilmer). In one sequence after another, the sound track trembles as the sleek planes pursue each other through the clouds, and, yeah, it's exciting. But the love story between Cruise and McGillis is a washout.
It's pale and unconvincing compared with the chemistry between Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay in "Risky Business," and between McGillis and Harrison Ford in "Witness" - not to mention between Richard Gere and Debra Winger in "An Officer and a Gentleman," which obviously inspired "Top Gun." Cruise and McGillis spend a lot of time squinting uneasily at each other and exchanging words as if they were weapons, and when they finally get physical, they look like the stars of one of those sexy new perfume ads. There's no flesh and blood here, which is remarkable, given the almost palpable physical presence McGillis had in "Witness." In its other scenes on the ground, the movie seems content to recycle old cliches and conventions out of countless other war movies.
Wouldn't you know, for example, that Maverick's commanding officer at the flying school is the only man who knows what happened to the kid's father in Vietnam? And are we surprised when Maverick's best friend dies in his arms? Is there any suspense as Maverick undergoes his obligatory crisis of conscience, wondering whether he can ever fly again? Movies like "Top Gun" are hard to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts are so relentless. The dogfights are absolutely the best since Clint Eastwood's electrifying aerial scenes in "Firefox." But look out for the scenes where the people talk to one another.
Big Al 1992 said:
Watched a making of Top Gun this week.
Learned - the classroom scene was one of the glaring things the Navy pilots said would never happen - school desks, cheap blackboard, in a hangar.
If a tour guide in San Diego shows you on the beach where the volleyball scene took place, they are lying. Crews found a grassy park, filled it with sand, shot for 2 days, picked up the sand and replaced the grass.
Meg Ryan auditioned for Kelly McGillis role and did not get it.
Movie slammed by critics.
You forgot: "Tony Scott; greatest director of all ****ing time"
Did that show mention why the original Top Gun was afraid to say the nationally of the enemy? It's not like they were ever going to sell tickets in the USSR.
Bunk Moreland said:TCTTS said:
In a non-COVID universe, our need for speed would have be quenched... tomorrow night.
Would have been risky but I still say it could have been.
That's a big gamble with a $30 million dollar pla... Uh, $150 million dollar movie
Just played the opening scene in the media room to test my new recliner - standard procedure for the past 20 years anytime something is added to the media system. Wife complains that the whole house is shaking - standard procedure also.
This is true.InternetFan02 said:
Just played the opening scene in the media room to test my new recliner - standard procedure for the past 20 years anytime something is added to the media system. Wife complains that the whole house is shaking - standard procedure also.
I bet Dunkirk would be a good movie to add to testing. Not necessarily to watch the whole thing of course.
Was great as the saint as well.
Holy cow, he dropped Goose dying in his review?
Also, isn't Charlie a blonde?
Also, isn't Charlie a blonde?
Big Al 1992 said:
Watched a making of Top Gun this week.
Learned - the classroom scene was one of the glaring things the Navy pilots said would never happen - school desks, cheap blackboard, in a hangar.
If a tour guide in San Diego shows you on the beach where the volleyball scene took place, they are lying. Crews found a grassy park, filled it with sand, shot for 2 days, picked up the sand and replaced the grass.
Meg Ryan auditioned for Kelly McGillis role and did not get it.
Movie slammed by critics.
Watched that same show. Tonight's is about Back to the Future
How about posting direct links to these episodes? There are many different Making of Top Gun episodes on YouTube.. which one are you guys referring to?
These are two hour specials on Reelz channel on DirecTV (238)
The Too Gun one is airing again this afternoon and the BTTF one is on at 7
The Too Gun one is airing again this afternoon and the BTTF one is on at 7
Found it! Recorded both Top Gun and BTTFuture just now
Wife noticed one on Grease as well so I recorded that for her too
It's all day today
Wife noticed one on Grease as well so I recorded that for her too
It's all day today
Ugh. I have GOT to start bugging Suddenlink to pick up Reelz.
I'll debut when I'm GD good and ready, you got that?
Rick Dalton said:
Sir you gotta let go, you gotta let go Sir (of a soon to be theater release anyways)
Rick Dalton said:
Sir you gotta let go, you gotta let go Sir (of a soon to be theater release anyways) ((also cue Goose's death slow music))
tk for tu juan said:
I'll debut when I'm GD good and ready, you got that?
Yo TCTTS....
Question... of all these movies that keep getting pushed back on released dates... do you have a list of them that are actually finished? Like that could be released at any point, and the only thing I assuming stopping them is the virus... I assume there has to be at least a good number of blockbusters that were finished
Question... of all these movies that keep getting pushed back on released dates... do you have a list of them that are actually finished? Like that could be released at any point, and the only thing I assuming stopping them is the virus... I assume there has to be at least a good number of blockbusters that were finished
There's no official list or anything, and there are a lot more finished than this, but it sounds like most if not all of these notable titles are in the can...
Bill & Ted Face the Music
Black Widow
Candyman
F9
Free Guy
The French Dispatch
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
In the Heights
Jungle Cruise
The King's Man
Last Night in Soho
Mulan
No Time To Die
A Quiet Place Part II
Tenet
Top Gun: Maverick
The Trial of the Chicago 7
The Woman in the Window
Without Remorse
Wonder Woman 1984
And then there are of course a lot more notable titles that finished filming before the shutdown, that should be complete in the next few months, like Dune, The Eternals, Mank, West Side Story, etc.
Bill & Ted Face the Music
Black Widow
Candyman
F9
Free Guy
The French Dispatch
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
In the Heights
Jungle Cruise
The King's Man
Last Night in Soho
Mulan
No Time To Die
A Quiet Place Part II
Tenet
Top Gun: Maverick
The Trial of the Chicago 7
The Woman in the Window
Without Remorse
Wonder Woman 1984
And then there are of course a lot more notable titles that finished filming before the shutdown, that should be complete in the next few months, like Dune, The Eternals, Mank, West Side Story, etc.
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